Conflict for Hedgecock’s Attorney Resolved : Nevada Judge Lets Goodman Off the Hook

Doubt over whether attorney Oscar Goodman will represent San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock at his second felony trial apparently was eliminated Tuesday when a federal judge here told Goodman that he would not require him to be present for a racketeering trial next month.

U.S. District Judge Lloyd George told Goodman on Tuesday that if Hedgecock’s case begins next Wednesday--a timetable established Monday by San Diego Superior Court Judge William L. Todd Jr.--he probably will postpone the Nevada case, which is scheduled to begin Aug. 5. One of the 18 defendants in the Nevada case, reputed mobster Anthony (Tony the Ant) Spilotro, is Goodman’s client.

“It would be impossible to try the (Nevada) case without me,” Goodman said. “But even though this is a real inconvenience for Judge George, he’s indicated that he’s going to be accommodating rather than confrontational.”

Tuesday’s apparent resolution to Goodman’s schedule dilemma came one day after Todd set the Hedgecock and Spilotro cases on a collision course by moving up the mayor’s trial three weeks ahead of its originally scheduled Aug. 22 starting date. Todd, however, has said that he believes George is primarily to blame for the conflict, because the Aug. 22 date had already been set when George last spring postponed the racketeering case from June to Aug. 5.

Todd’s action, however, was widely viewed by principals in the Hedgecock case as a gambit in a game of legal brinkmanship with George, who was just as insistent that Goodman be in his courtroom next month. The two judges’ intransigence left Goodman in limbo, ordered to simultaneously be in two courtrooms and feeling, he said, “like the judges are playing Ping Pong and I’m the ball.”

On Tuesday, however, George decided to lay down the paddle.

After speaking to Todd by telephone, George told Goodman that unless a procedural appeal in the Hedgecock case causes an 11th-hour postponement, he would probably delay the Spilotro case to accommodate Goodman’s schedule.

“The judge said he didn’t want to get involved in a game of judicial gamesmanship and so he wouldn’t do anything to prevent me from trying the mayor’s case,” Goodman said.

George also told him, Goodman said, that he feared that prolonging the debate over which courtroom he would appear in next month “would be distasteful and demeaning to the judiciary.”

Earlier Tuesday, George said in an interview that he did not want the potential schedule conflict “to be seen as a confrontation between the two courts.”

“It’s simply a situation where we have two important cases in two different courts at the same time,” George said. “This isn’t an argumentative situation. I don’t want to see it escalate . . . into more than it is.”

When he returned here Monday shortly after Todd advanced Hedgecock’s trial date, Goodman said he was worried that George might order him to remain in Nevada to try the racketeering case. However, George assured Goodman on Tuesday that he would not issue such an order.

“He could have done that but he won’t,” Goodman said. “What he said was: ‘I’m not going to get involved in a national judicial scandal.’ ”

Goodman added that his unavailability for the racketeering case next month would mean that Spilotro might be tried separately later or, more likely, that the entire case might be postponed until early next year.

George explained that he has been trying to get the racketeering case started since early 1983, but that various appeals of motions and the difficulty of synchronizing 18 lawyers’ timetables have delayed the trial. George added that because the Hedgecock case is a more recent one that involves a single defendant, he believed the Nevada case should take precedence.

“I’ve taken the view that when we get all the people in position and the circumstances are such that we could proceed, then we should go ahead, because this is an old case that needs to get set,” George said.

“I expected that the San Diego case could be moved back a month or so. I didn’t think that would be a problem. But apparently it was.”

Although Goodman said that George initially was angered by Todd’s action Monday, the federal judge said Tuesday that he is “sure that Judge Todd is a very able and well-intentioned person . . . who had good reason” for moving up Hedgecock’s trial.

“He feels strongly that his case should go to trial, and I understand and sympathize with that,” George said. “And he was sympathetic to our situation. I’m a very patient and reasonable person, and I just want to try to find an answer to this problem, not get into an argument.”

Later, after George told Goodman that he would not try to block his participation in the Hedgecock case, the lawyer praised George for “doing a real classy thing.”

“He could have made the situation much more difficult for everyone, especially me and my clients,” Goodman said. “But he’s not someone who plays games. I think he showed real class.”